Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Thursday, 24 October 2024
Committee on Drugs Use
Family and Community: Discussion
9:30 am
Seán Crowe (Dublin South West, Sinn Fein)
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We were talking about the whole area of youth through the justice system and the lens of it. Again, it seems to be that if you are seen as a potential problem, the supports, the funding or group is there in relation to it, as Mr. Perth mentioned in his opening statement. We seem to pigeonhole young people who are a potential problem. All of a sudden, there is funding there in the justice system but not if they are outside of it. Will Mr. Perth expand on what he is trying to say on that?
On the parks stuff, they are putting in a lot of machinery for calisthenics and so on in parts of Tallaght and elsewhere. Mr. Perth makes the point that it is all right to put the machines in place, but you need supports for young people - and not so young people like me - who do not know how to use them. If there is not someone there to guide them through, if they do not know how to use them or if they are not seen as something they would use, they are not going to see them as an addition to their lives, their community or whatever else. Will he address those two points?
I am not excluding anyone else in relation to some of the things. Mr. McCann referred to the Traveller stuff and the education element of it. I remember when I was the education spokesperson at one time, overnight a Minister did away with all the Traveller supports such as those people who used to call out to the house. It was a call the Minister at the time made. The unions at the time were complaining about class sizes and all of a sudden there were a thousand of these teachers and they were diverted somewhere else. Has that had an impact on Travellers?